Sometimes you’re working away in your office and the fire alarm goes off and you stop for a minute and ask yourself is this a real or false alarm, what do you do? If you are like most people I know unless they see people running down the corridor they tend to ignore it. Intuitively, we use the same internal responses with our clients. We often observe something that is potential issue, e.g. a competitors name in the company sign in book. We may hear something in a meeting that we would like to ignore e.g. the budget meeting has been delayed. Or we intuitively feel something is not quite right .e.g. the client has a longer time period in retuning our calls. Usually these are alarms that are going off and we tend to ignore and get on with our daily tasks
We sometimes actually fear these being a real alarm, because it is bad news that we don’t want to hear. When you do this and blindly keep pursuing this so called opportunity it usually costs you and your company lots of wasted money and time. These alarms are going to go off and they are unavoidable in business, so how do we be brave and confront them?
• When we experience an alarm firstly proceed with caution and check out to see if the alarm is false or real
• If it is a real alarm this may not mean that it is a failure and avoid. Although if we do it will be costly. It maybe after a clarification check with the client and some further research that the event can be placed back into a safe state. E.g. the budget has been delayed, because they are going to combine your project with another project, which will mean a greater opportunity for you
• Express your concerns with the client, explain the alarm you have observed and ask the client what they think you should do to resolve this. Note, ask the client to get the response from them on the next steps which may or may not be want you want to hear, but will avoid costly mistakes of speeding on
In a client meeting the client is always giving you signals. These signals come through different channels either verbally (the words or content of what they say), vocally (the emphasis on voice tone, pace e.g. when your partner or mum shouts your name, beware), or visually (observing their body language and non verbal communication). Having a finely tuned awareness of this provides the opportunity to deal with these alarms early and be far more effective in the way you communicate with you client.
Multiple alarms
When you have a large service account you will be in a situation where there are many alarms going off, either true or false, all the time. Often these are in situations where you may have not been directly involved but are ultimately accountable when the issue gets escalated. You need always be testing if it’s a true or false alarm in each specific situation and never discount them or pretend they are not real. Go and check them out using the process, and remember if it is a real alarm, confront it as it will be at your peril if you chose to ignore, it could actually be a fire. Get bad news early so you can be in control and select you course of action.
